Get inside the report and you’ll see it’s not all bad news. A 1.3% slump in government expenditures, international trade and a decline in inventory were important factors. Consumption actually gained by 1.5%, Miller Tabak strategist Andrew Wilkinson notes this morning. The consumption figure especially is interesting. “This is the biggest clue to counter accusations that the economy is slowing down,” Wilkinson writes. He expects upward revisions for both inventory and trade next time around.

Marketfield Asset Management’s Michael Shaoul is on the same wavelength as Wilkinson this morning. Don’t read too much into this report:

We have never understood the point of pouring over GDP reports when the data is simply too “large” and nebulous to be of much use for understanding where opportunity and risk resides in a marketplace. This is particularly true when Private sector and Public sector expenditure move in opposite directions, as was the case in Q4 2012, since the net result can be very misleading.

The headline report showed Real US GDP to have shrunk by -0.1% compared to expected growth of 1.1%. However, the shadow of the Fiscal Cliff loomed over the data with total Federal spending dropping -6.6% on an annualized basis and the sub-category of Defense being slashed by -22.2%. Much as we would love to have turned the corner on the bloated Federal expenditure Q4 clearly saw some accounting shenanigans which presumably created some space for the Treasury to operate in the event that the Fiscal Cliff and/or Debt Ceiling came into effect. We would expect these measures to be reversed either in Q1 or Q2 2013, with a corresponding boost to the data.

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Chris Dieterich has covered the U.S. stock market for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. He is a graduate of Regis University and the Missouri School of Journalism.